According to a study published in Paediatrics magazine, women and girls who have closer relationships with their mothers are likely to lose their virginity later in life. Of the 3,000 women questioned, 44 per cent who reported having a ‘high quality relationship’ with their mothers also reported having sex for the first time after the age of 16.

Why?

The obvious explanation is that having a healthy mother-daughter relationship gives you a stronger start in life. A parent who educates their child about sex, in an open and honest way, has been proven over and over again to have more sexually secure children.

Sex therapist Vanessa Marin explains: “This study is yet another piece of proof that it’s important for parents to talk to their children about sex and sexuality throughout a child’s entire life. There are age appropriate ways to talk about sex at every stage of a child’s development. The more information a child has the better prepared they are to make healthy designs for themselves.”

Anecdotally, the evidence certainly seems to stack up. When I asked friends, their answers seemed to echo my experiences: those who weren’t particularly rebellious waited until they had left school or even until after university for their first sexual experiences. While those who had screaming rows with their mums, did it earlier. After all, having sex is the ultimate two fingers up to your parents, right?

Stephanie, 24, told me: ‘I was 14 when I lose my virginity, and I wasn’t very close to my mum. We certainly clashed a lot in my teens. I’m not entirely sure about the connection but I think there was an aspect of misbehaving. Also, from a young age most of my closest and most trusting relationships were outside of my family, which made me feel very grown-up and independent. Looking back, I see a very vulnerable and silly girl – though I don’t especially regret when I started having sex.’

Emancipation is a big deal for teens. Whether they’re dying their hair pink, getting forbidden piercings or having sex – the motivation is largely the same. Its about distancing oneself from childhood and pushing parental boundaries.

It’s no surprise, then, that if you’re not close to your mother the temptation to take that road would come earlier.

That process of emancipation has been heralded as a bad thing. Being a ‘wild child’ is something to worry about – a sign that parenting has gone wrong. That you’ve failed.

Is it really any healthier to cling on to your childhood?

But is that really the case? We’re concerned for teens who experiment with sex or alcohol, but is it really any healthier to cling on to your childhood?

Alexandra, 32, told me that she lost her virginity aged 23. “As the youngest child of the family, I think that my relationship with my mum was a big part of why I lost my virginity relatively late. I didn’t want to make her sad by ‘growing up’. I really think that was a huge issue for me.

“It wasn’t that I thought it would disappoint her morally, but that I was somehow worried it would break our bond. It felt like [by having sex] I was bringing about change and getting closer to growing up and apart from her.”

Alexandra’s experience was as a result of a close and happy relationship with her mum, but a deep connection between mothers and daughters isn’t always positive.

“I grew up very close to my mother,” Emma, 31, told me. ” She taught me that sex was a special, sacred thing between a man and woman who loved each other. She also taught me that a certain type of woman has multiple sexual partners, and that those women would probably end up in hell. She taught me and my sisters that sex was something that women had done to them by men.

“So I waited to have sex until I was engaged, and even then I felt like I’d failed her. We’re still close, but if I’m honest, I resent the way that she treated sex. It made me lose my virginity later, but it didn’t make me happy.”

In researching this article, I had a moment of clarity about my own experience. My mother took a prosaic attitude towards teenage sex, keeping the lines of communication open and regularly offering me contraceptive options. But I didn’t start having sex until I was almost 19.

Why did I wait? I saw losing my virginity as an ending – severing my attachment to being a child and taking me away from my mother.

I have written before about how harmful the concept of ‘virginity’ is. But this article is the first time that I’ve really questioned how the concept affected me personally.

Years later, I now know that ‘losing your virginity’ is no bigger milestone than, say, finishing your university degree or taking your first solo trip abroad. Yes, it’s an exciting new experience, but it’s not a ‘loss’ of anything. It’s just having tried something new for the first time. Looking back, I feel angry on behalf of my teenage self who was so scared that by giving in to perfectly natural instincts she would be forfeiting her maternal relationship.

Women who are closer to their mums may well have sex later in life. But it doesn’t add up to having got it right – anymore than having a daughter who had sex in her early teens means you’ve got it wrong.

All spunk is funky, but sometimes it is *too* funky.

By Hannah Smothers

Very many things about the male human body are a mystery. Penises, hy? Those tiny nipples, what!? But dip beneath the hairy surface of a man’s skin, and even more mysteries await, hiding away in his male depths.

While usually contained, safe and sound inside of the body, semen is a fluid most people eventually come into contact with, but also do not know very much about. If it weren’t for Samantha Jones calling attention to the phenomenon of funky spunk in the “Easy Come, Easy Go” episode of Sex and the City in 2000, women the world over may have lived in quiet misery, forever perplexed by the unpleasantness of the male sex fluid.

To help educate the masses on the contents, and, yes, healthy range of funkiness in semen, Cosmopolitan.com spoke with a urology specialist and sexual health counselor about all things semen.

How semen should look

Aleece Fosnight, a urology physician’s assistant and sex counselor with AASECT, explained that healthy semen should be a milky white or slightly grayish color. “Right after ejaculation, it’s pretty thick,” Fosnight said. “And 25-30 minutes later, it becomes clear and runny.” The change in fluidity is to help aid in reproduction, and thin out the cervical mucous to aid in the implantation of a ~fertilized egg~.

How semen should (generally) smell and taste

Semen is a bodily fluid. Can you name any bodily fluids that smell like roses or taste like freshly baked cookies? No! There are none. So as a bodily fluid, you can expect semen to have a specific taste and odor that isn’t necessarily going to be lovely. Just to clear that right up.

The thing to note about semen is that it’s a vehicle for delivering sperm through a vagina. So everything in it is meant to aid in that process. Semen is mostly made up of sperm, proteins, fructose (to help energize the sperm for transport), and seminal fluid. Fosnight said the typical pH of semen is somewhere around 7-8, or slightly alkaline. The vagina, on the other hand, has a pH between 3-5, or slightly acidic, so the alkaline nature of semen helps keep the sperm alive in an acidic vaginal environment (are you having fun yet?).

Because of it’s slightly alkaline pH, Fosnight said healthy semen should have an “ammonia or bleach-like kind of a smell,” and will taste a bit sweet (because of the fructose) and salty — like the perfect trail mix, in drinkable liquid form, straight out of a penis!

Something Fosnight clarified was that semen left dormant for too long will start to develop a more concentrated taste or smell. Think of it like a stagnant body of water, collecting film and attracting flies. To keep semen from developing a stronger taste or odor — and also to promote prostate health — studies have found that ejaculating at least twice a week is beneficial to a man’s health.

That thing about food changing his taste is true

Remember when Samantha Jones makes the guy with the spunky funk choke down a series of wheatgrass shots in an attempt to improve his semen flavor profile? According to Fosnight, that wasn’t the smartest move.

Although there’s been very little research done on the subject, health care professionals often hear anecdotally from patients that certain foods can slightly affect the taste of semen. While Fosnight said it’s normal for fruits, which are high in sugar content, to change the taste of a person’s semen, vegetables generally don’t have much of an effect.

“Smoking can change the taste,” Fosnight added. “It will have more of a bitter taste to it with smoking and with alcohol.” So, no one’s saying you should avoid ingesting a mouthful of piping hot semen after your partner’s spent the night having too many drinks and then *whoops!* accidentally chain-smoking outside of the bar, but know that semen might taste especially bitter and, ahem, spunky after such an occasion.

When the spunkiness is trying to tell you something

Though there aren’t very many health issues that can be spotted based on a person’s semen, there are a few things to look out for. “A lot of times guys won’t notice it, so partners report if there’s something wrong,” Fosnight said. She also added that at her practice, they call this “when semen goes bad.”

The things to look out for are changes in color. “The biggest thing is if it has a yellow or green appearance to it,” Fosnight said. “Like a prominent yellow or opaque consistency.” An opaque yellow or green color is typically a sign of an STI — usually gonorrhea. A guy whose semen has changed colors like this should definitely see a doctor, and avoid sex until any sort of infection is either ruled out or treated.

It doesn’t happen all too often — Fosnight estimated maybe once in a lifetime for most men — but a busted blood vessel in the prostate (which is responsible for carrying semen out of the body) can cause the semen to have a red or brownish color. If that color normalizes within a few days, there’s nothing really to worry about. But as with any health concern, a persistent discoloration should result in a doctor’s appointment.

While not super common, blood in the semen is often indicative of a prostate injury, explained Fosnight. These can be caused by using anal toys or putting pressure on the prostate, and if the bleeding subsides and doesn’t come with any other symptoms like high blood pressure, things are fine.

As long as a man is doing his due diligence by having regular STI tests, regular prostate exams when he turns 40, and just FORCING himself to ejaculate a couple times a week, semen should be pretty healthy. It may never taste like frozen yogurt, but at least it will be healthy.

The U.S. teen pregnancy rate is at a historic low, with the number of teen births declining dramatically over the past decades.

But there are disparities among groups of teens. Latina teens have the highest teen birth rate of any racial or ethnic group. Latino teens are also more affected by STIs – particularly chlamydia, syphilis, and gonorrhea – than their white peers. Sexually active Latino teens are also less likely to use condoms and other forms of contraception.

Sexual exploration during adolescence is normal and healthy. These disparities are a sign that many Latino teens have unmet needs when it comes to information about sexual health and relationships.

Prior research has found that teens’ source of sex information is related to their beliefs about sex and sexual behaviors. And today teens get information about sex from a variety of sources, including their parents, peers, school and digital media.

Understanding where teens learn about sex and how that influences them can help us find ways to encourage healthy sexual behaviors, such as using condoms and birth control.

But despite these disparities, and the fact that Latinos are also the largest ethnic or racial minority in the U.S. (constituting 17 percent of the population and 23 percent of all youth), there is very little research about where Latino teens are getting information about sex.

To find out more about which sources are most relevant to Latino teens, we surveyed nearly 1,200 Latino ninth graders at 10 different high schools in Los Angeles.

In the survey, teens had to select their “most important source of information about sex and relationships while growing up” from a list of 11 options. Rather than asking about the many sources of information they have encountered, we wanted to know which one they felt was most important in their lives.

Parents were the most commonly listed source, with 38 percent saying their parents were their most important source of information about sex and relationships. These findings are similar to surveys of teens from other racial and ethnic groups, who report that parents are the most important influence on their decisions about sex.

For some teens in our study, different sources – including other family members (17 percent), classes at school (13 percent) and friends (11 percent) – fill this important role.

Although other studies have found that teens often rely on media and the internet for sexual health information, teens in our study rarely mentioned them as their most important source. That doesn’t mean they aren’t accessing information about sex online or hearing about sex on TV, but that they do not necessarily see these as the most important source in their lives.

We also wanted to know if there was a connection between Latino teens’ most important source of sex information and their intentions to use condoms in the future.

Overall, most teens in our study planned to use condoms the next time they had sex, with 71 percent of teens saying that they “definitely will” and 22 percent saying that they “probably will.” But did their preferred source of information about sex matter in this decision?

We compared the influence of parents, other family members, friends, boyfriends or girlfriends, schools, health care providers and media on teens’ intentions to use condoms.

After controlling for other factors known to be linked to teens’ sexual behaviors, such as age, gender and sexual experience, we found that these Latino teens’ stated most important source of sex information was significantly related to their intentions to use condoms in the future. In other words, there is a connection between where teens get information about sex and their future sexual behaviors.

We then compared the influence of other sources of sex information to the influence of parents.

Teens who reported that their family members, classes at school, health care providers, boyfriends or girlfriends, or the media were their main source of information about sex reported similarly high intentions to use condoms to teens who listed their parents as most important.

However, the teens who turned to their friends for sex information were less likely to say they planned to use condoms than teens who turn to their parents. This is not too surprising. Teens who rely on friends as their primary source of sex information may be more vulnerable to peer pressure to avoid using condoms or may be getting misinformation about their effectiveness.

The primary source of sex information was particularly important for the boys’ intentions to use condoms in the future. The boys who rely on friends or media and internet as their main sources for sex information were significantly less likely to report planning to use condoms than the boys who turned to their parents.

Boys who do not have a trusted adult who they can rely on for sex information may be seeking out sources that could also spread negative messages about condoms, such as “locker room talk” with peers or pornography online.

These findings highlight the importance of providing comprehensive sources of sex information for Latino teens at home, in their schools and in the community.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how these results compare to other groups of teens. Not enough research has been done on how the various sources of sex information may influence teens’ sexual behavior, and there is a need for more studies on this topic.

Given that parents are a popular and important source of information for many teens, interventions that empower parents to talk to their kids about sexuality, relationships and sexual health and provide them with accurate information could help.

It may be beneficial to include other family members such as grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings in these interventions so they too can provide accurate information when teens turn to them.

Encouraging positive family conversations about sex and relationships will help young people make healthier decisions and grow into sexually healthy adults.

When Katie, 36, was identified as having an intellectual disability as a young child after scoring below 70 on an IQ test, her parents were told that she would never learn to read and would spend her days in a sheltered workshop. Today she is a single mum to an 8-year-old son, drives a car, and works at a local restaurant as a waitress. She blasted through society’s expectations of her — including the expectation that she would never have sex.

Katie never had a formal sexual education: What she learned came straight from her legal guardian, Pam, who explained to her the importance of safe sex and waiting until she was ready. “I waited until I was 19, which is a lot later than some of my friends,” Katie says. Still, like many women with disabilities, she admits to being pressured into sex her first time, something she regrets. “I don’t think I was ready,” she says. “It actually was with someone who wasn’t my boyfriend. He was cute, and he wanted to have sex, so I said I wanted it, but at the last minute I changed my mind and it happened anyway. I just felt really stupid and uncomfortable afterwards.” She never told her boyfriend what happened.

Katie’s experience is certainly not unique: In the general population, one out of six women has survived a rape or attempted rape, according to statistics from RAINN. But for women with intellectual disabilities (ID), it’s even more sobering: About 25% of females with ID referred for birth control had a history of sexual violence, while other research suggests that almost half of people with ID will experience at least 10 sexually abusive incidents in their lifetime, according to The Arc, an advocacy organisation for people with intellectual disabilities.

When it comes to their sex lives, research shows many women with intellectual disability don’t associate sex with pleasure, and tend to play a passive role, more directed to “pleasuring the penis of their sex partner” than their own enjoyment, according to a 2015 study published in the Journal of Sex Research. They’re more likely to experience feelings of depression and guilt after sex. They’re at a greater risk for early sexual activity and early pregnancy. They’re also more likely to get an STD: 26% of cognitively impaired female high schoolers report having one, compared to 10% of their typical peers, according to a study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Katie, for example, contracted herpes in her early 20s, from having sex with another man (she says none of her partners have had an intellectual disability). “I was hurt and itching down there, so I went to the doctor, who told me I had this bad disease,” she recalls. She was so upset she confronted her partner: “I went to his office crying, but he denied everything,” she remembers.

Given all of this, you’d think public schools — which are in charge of educating kids with intellectual disability — would be making sure it’s part of every child’s curriculum. But paradoxically, kids with ID are often excluded from sexual education classes, including STD and pregnancy prevention. “People with intellectual disabilities don’t get sexual education,” says Julie Ann Petty, a safety and sexual violence educator at the University of Arkansas. Petty, who has cerebral palsy herself, has worked extensively with adults who have intellectual disabilities (while not all people living with cerebral palsy have intellectual disabilities, they face many of the same barriers to sexual education). “This [lack of education] is due to the central norms we still have when thinking about people with ID: They need to be protected; they are not sexual beings; they don’t need any sex-related information. Disability rights advocates have worked hard over the last 20-some years to get rid of those stereotypes, but they are still out there.

“I work with adults with disabilities all the time, and the attitudes of the caretakers and staff around them are, ‘Oh, our people do not do that stuff. Our people do not think about sex,’” Petty says. “It’s tragic, and really sets this vulnerable population up for abuse: if they don’t have knowledge about their private body parts, for example, how are they going to know if someone is doing something inappropriate?”

Historically, individuals with intellectual disabilities were marginalised, shunted off to institutions, and forcibly sterilised. That all began to change in the 1950s and 1960s, with the push by parents and civil rights advocates to keep kids with ID at home and mainstream them into regular education environments. But while significant progress has been made over the last half century in terms of increased educational and employment opportunities, when it comes to sex ed, disability rights advocates say we’re still far, far behind.

“What I find is shocking is I’ll go in to teach a workshop on human sexuality to a group of teenagers or young adults with cognitive disabilities, and I find that their knowledge is no different than what [young people with ID would have known] back in the 1970s,” says Katherine McLaughlin, who has worked as a sexuality educator and trainer for Planned Parenthood of Northern New England for over 20 years and is the co-author of the curriculum guide “Sexuality Education for Adults with Developmental Disabilities.” “They tell me they were taken out of their mainstream health classes in junior high and high school during the sexual education part, because their teachers don’t think they need it. I’ve worked with adults in their 50s who have no idea how babies are made. It’s mind blowing.”

“There’s this belief that they don’t need it, or that they won’t understand it, or it will actually make them more likely to be sexually active or act inappropriately,” adds Pam Malin, VAWA Project Coordinator, Disability Rights Wisconsin. “But research shows that actually the opposite is true.”

Indeed, as the mother of a young girl with Down syndrome, I’m personally struck by how asexualised people with intellectual disabilities still are. Case in point: When fashion model Madeline Stuart — who has Down syndrome — posted pictures of herself online in a bikini, the Internet exploded with commentary, some positive, some negative. “I think it is time people realised that people with Down syndrome can be sexy and beautiful and should be celebrated,” Madeline’s mother, Roseanne, told ABC News. Yet somehow, it’s still scandalous.

Ironically, sometimes the biggest barrier comes from parents of people with ID — which hits close to home for me. “A lot of parents still treat their kids’ sexuality as taboo,” says Malin. She recalls one situation where a mom in one of her parent support groups got attacked by other parents: “She was very open about masturbation with her adolescent son, and actually left a pail on his doorknob so he could masturbate in a sock and then put it in the pail — she’d wash it with no questions asked. I applauded it: I thought it was an excellent way to give her son some freedom and choice around his sexuality. But it made the other parents incredibly uncomfortable.”

Sometimes, parents are simply not comfortable talking about sexuality, because they don’t know how to start the conversation, adds Malin. Several studies have also found that both staff and family generally encourage friendship, not sexual relationships. “It’s a lot of denial: The parents don’t want to admit that their children are maturing emotionally and developing adult feelings,” says Malin. An Australian study published in the journal Sexuality & Disability found that couples with intellectual disability were simply never left alone, and thus never allowed to engage in sexual behaviour.

I’m doing my best — but despite all my good intentions, it’s certainly not been easy. This fall, I sat down to tell my three small children about the birds and the bees. My two boys — in second grade and kindergarten — got into the conversation right away, and as we began talking I realised it wasn’t a surprise to them; at a young age, they’d already picked up some of the basic facts from playmates. But my daughter, my eldest, was a whole different story. Jo Jo is in third grade and has Down syndrome, so she’s delayed, both with language and cognition. And because of her ID, and all the risk that goes along with it, she was the kid I was most worried about. So it was disheartening to see her complete lack of interest in the conversation, wandering off to her iPad or turning on the radio. Every time I would try to coax her back to our little group, she would shout, “No!”

Lisa Shevin, whose 30-year-old daughter, Chani, has Down syndrome, says she’s never had a heart-to-heart with her daughter about sexuality. “The problem is, Chani’s not very verbal, so I’m never quite sure what she grasps,” says Shevin, who lives in Oak Park, a suburb of Detroit. While Chani has a “beau” at work, another young man who also has an intellectual disability, “They’re never, ever left alone, so they never have an opportunity to follow through on anything,” says Shevin. “I feel so frustrated as her mother, because I want to talk to her about sex ed, but I just don’t know how. I’ve never gotten any guidance from anyone. But just because my daughter is cognitively impaired, it doesn’t mean she doesn’t have the same hormones as any other woman her age. You can’t just sweep it under the rug and assume she doesn’t understand.”

In one interesting twist, sex educators say they tend to see more women with intellectual disability than men being sexually aggressive. “I worked with a young woman in her late 20s who would develop crushes on attractive male staff members at her group home,” recalls Malin. “She would try to flirt, and the guys would play it off as ‘hah hah funny,’ but eventually she called police and accused one of them of rape.” While the police investigated and eventually dropped charges, Malin was brought in to work with her: “We had a long conversation about where this had come from, and she kept talking about Beau and Hope from ‘Days of Our Lives’,” Malin recalls. “It turned out she had gotten so assertive with one of the male staff that he’d very adamantly said no to her, but her understanding of rape boiled down to gleaning bits from soap operas, and she thought that if a man in any situation acted forcefully with a woman then it was sexual assault.”

While most cases don’t escalate to this point, sometimes people with intellectual disability can exhibit behavior that causes problems: Chani, for example, was kicked out of sleep-away camp a few years ago after staff complained that she was hugging too many of her male counsellors. “She’d develop little crushes on them, and she never tried anything further than putting her arms around them and wanting to hang out with them all the time, but it made staff uncomfortable,” Shevin recalls. Chani’s since found a new camp where counsellors take her behaviour in stride: “They’ve found a way to work with it, so if she doesn’t want to do an activity, they’ll convince her by telling her afterwards she can spend time with Noah, one of the male counsellors she has a crush on,” says Shevin. (At the end of the summer, Noah gave Chani a tiara, which remains one of her prize possessions.)

So what can be done? Sadly, even if someone with ID is able to get into a sexual education program, the existing options tend to severely miss the mark: A 2015 study published in the Journal for Sex Research analysed 20 articles on sexual education programs aimed at this group and found most fell far short, mainly because people who unable to generalise what they learned in the program to an outside setting. “This is a major problem for individuals who are cognitively challenged: They have difficulty applying a skill or knowledge they get in one setting to somewhere else,” explains McLaughlin. “But just like everywhere else, most get it eventually — it just takes a lot of time, repetition, and patience.”

In the meantime, for parents like me, McLaughlin has a few tips. “Take advantage of teachable moments,” she says. “If a family member is pregnant, talk about it with them. If you’re watching a TV show together and there’s sexual content, don’t just sweep it under the rug — try to break down the issues with them.” It’s also important to be as concrete as possible: “Since people with ID have trouble generalising, use anatomically correct dolls or photographs whenever possible, especially when describing body parts,” she says.

Some local disability organisations also offer workshops for both teenagers and adults with intellectual disabilities. And the Special Olympics offers protective behaviours training for volunteers. But at this point there’s a dearth of legislation and organisations that are fighting for better sexual education, which means parents like myself have to take the initiative when it comes to educating our kids about their burgeoning sexuality.

It’s a responsibility I’m taking to heart in my own life. Now, every night when I bathe my daughter, we make a game of identifying body parts, some of which are private, and I explain to her that no one touches those areas except for mommy or a doctor. Recently, she’s started humping objects at home like the arm of the sofa, and I’ve begun explaining to her that if she wants to do something like that, it needs to be in the privacy of her own room. It’s taken a lot of repeating and reinforcing, but she seems to be getting the message. I have no doubt that — like every other skill she’s mastered, such as reading or writing her name or potty training — it will take time, but she’ll get there.

As for Katie, with age and experience, she’s become more comfortable with her sexuality. “It took me a while, but I’m confident in myself,” she says. “I am one hundred percent okay saying no to someone — if I’m pressured, there’s no way in the world now I’ll do anything with anybody. But that means when it does happen, it feels right.”

The internet has changed sex and relationships forever. So if your education in the subject stopped at 16, here’s a refresher for the modern world

What was your sex education like? Did you get any at all past the age of 16? Given that only a quarter to a third of young people have sex before they are 16, but most will have had sex at least once by the age of 19, it seems remiss not to provide high-quality sex education for the 16-25 age range (especially since that is the age group most at risk of contracting STIs such as chlamydia).

Unfortunately, sex education hasn’t moved on much from puberty, plumbing and prevention, and is often reported as being too little, too late and too biological. In the new internet world order where porn and internet hook-ups prevail, and the use of dating apps by perpetrators of sexual violence was reported last week to have increased sharply, it is time we provided sex and relationships education fit for the 21st century, to help us to enjoy our bodies safely.

So if you missed out on quality sex education, or could do with a top-up, here are five things relating to sex and relationships you might want to think about:

1. Sexuality – We live in a heteronormative world, where gender binary and heterosexual norms prevail. Fixed ideas about sexual identity and sexuality can be limiting. We all need to understand sex as something more than a penis in a vagina and recognise that sex with all sorts of different body parts (or objects) in all sorts of wonderful configurations can be had. That’s not to say you have to experience kinds of sex outside your own comfort levels and boundaries. Be aware of how media, cultural background, gender and power dynamics influence sexuality. Monogamous heterosexuality does not have to be your path.

2) Consent – what it looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like. Enthusiastic consent should be a baseline expectation, not an aspiration. Without enthusiastic consent then sex is no fun (and quite feasibly rape). If consent is in any doubt at all, you need to stop and check in with your partner. You might even want to think about introducing safe words into your sexual interactions and ensuring you and your partner are confident using them.

‘Taking time to challenge and explore ideas around pleasure will help with your sex education.’

3) Pleasure – sex can be one of the most awesomely fun things you do with your body. All sorts of things can affect your ability to give and receive pleasure, including your upbringing, self-confidence, physical and mental health, and communication skills. If sex isn’t pleasurable and fun for you, what needs to change? It is worth noting that male pleasure is generally prioritised over female pleasure. Consider, for example, when you would consider a penis-in-vagina sexual interaction to be finished – at male orgasm or female orgasm?

Taking time to challenge and explore ideas around pleasure as well as deepening your understanding of your own body (in other words, masturbation) will help with your sex education. Always remember, you don’t have to have sex if you don’t want to.

4) Health and wellbeing – Love your body and know what is normal for you. Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. There are all sorts of pressures on us to make our bodies look a certain way, but take some time to appreciate the non-photoshopped, non-pornified variation in our bodies. Your shape and size (of penis, or breasts) do not matter – sex can be the best jigsaw puzzle, and genuine confidence in your body can help you figure out how to use it as an instrument for pleasure.

Knowing what is normal for you is also really important. There are women who continually get treated for thrush bacterial vaginosis and cystitis because they do not understand vaginal flora and the natural discharge variation in their monthly cycle. Nobody told them that having a wee shortly after sex is a good idea.

5) Safety – We are often taught to override our gut feelings. This sometimes stems from childhood, when adults have ignored our bodily autonomy. However it is vital we remember to tune into our gut instincts, especially given the rise in internet dating and internet dating-related crime. Being aware of your own personal safety and sexual boundaries when internet dating is essential.

Remember that no matter how you have been socialised, you do not need to be polite to someone who is making you feel uncomfortable. No is a complete sentence. If someone does not respect your right to bodily autonomy and violates your consent, it is never your fault; the blame lies entirely with them. Always trust your “spidey” sense – if it is tingling, it is trying to tell you something isn’t right, be that a relationship with unhealthy elements, or plans to meet up for a blind date. If a situation doesn’t feel right, think about what needs to change.